Topic: Big Tech
“Today, in addition to the problem of Big Tech censorship, we see speakers at universities shouted down, parents investigated and arrested for attempting to speak at school board meetings, and donors to conservative causes harassed and intimidated. The next conservative President must defend our First Amendment rights.”
He appears to be referring to Scott Smith (Loudoun County, Virginia), who was arrested at a schoolboard meeting for obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct, not for “speaking.” (He threatened a woman.)
p>Full contextual analysis of the foreword here.
“During the Trump and Biden Administrations, there has been a bipartisan focus on prioritizing R&D funding around the so-called Industries of the Future (IOTF). Under President Trump, IOTF priorities were artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), advanced communications/5G, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology. Under President Biden, this list has been expanded to include advanced materials, robotics, battery technology, cybersecurity, green products and clean technology, plant genetics and agricultural technologies, nanotechnology, and semiconductor and microelectronics technologies. These priorities should be evaluated and narrowed to ensure consistency with the next Administration’s priorities.”
I take this to mean that Vought is offended by the addition of green products and clean technology to their “Industries of the Future.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.2: Executive Office of the President of the United States here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world.”
He’s suggesting here that industries involved in areas like cutting-edge technology and intellectual property are susceptible to foreign influence and theft, especially from China, so they must be mindful of that possibility (true). The mention of investors implies concern that financial motivations in China or from Chinese partnerships might outweigh considerations of national security or ethical concerns in corporate decision-making. It does seem disingenuous for Carmack to point fingers at the Left for making ethically dubious business decisions involving with China when Ivanka Trump received 41 fast-tracked trademarks from China after her father was elected President.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.4: Intelligence Community here.
“Investigate, expose, and remediate any instances in which HHS violated people’s rights by: 1. Colluding with Big Tech to censor dissenting opinions during COVID. 2. Colluding with abortion advocates and LGBT advocates to violate conscience-protection laws and the Hyde Amendment.”
He’s indicating here that he believes that LGBTQ+ activists have been pressuring health care providers to provide gender care and abortions, even when they don’t want to, which is ridiculous. Note that he does not demonstrate proof of this. Read the analysis below for the consequences of this recommendation.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.
“BIS should additionally designate app providers (such as WeChat and Byte Dance/TikTok) known for undermining U.S. national security through data collection, surveillance, and influence operations, to the Entity List. This listing would prevent app users from program updates, which would quickly make these apps non-operational in the United States.”
Some U.S. lawmakers believe that TikTok is an urgent threat to National Security. The Biden Administration even threatened to ban it4 unless TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their stakes. Is it truly a threat, though? Evidence is unclear.
“It’s not that we know TikTok has done something, it’s that distrust of China and awareness of Chinese espionage has increased,” said James Lewis, an information security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The context for TikTok is much worse as trust in China vanishes.”
“Security experts say these scenarios are a possibility based on what’s publicly known about China’s laws and TikTok’s ownership structure, but stress that they are hypothetical at best. To date, there is no public evidence that Beijing has actually harvested TikTok’s commercial data for intelligence or other purposes.”
“Multiple privacy and security researchers who’ve examined TikTok’s app say there aren’t any glaring flaws suggesting the app itself is currently spying on people or leaking their information.”
“We did not find any overt vulnerabilities regarding their communication protocols, nor did we find any overt security problems within the app,” Lin said. “Regarding privacy, we also did not see the TikTok app exhibiting any behaviors similar to malware.”
Any such policy would not, then, be evidence-based.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.1: Department of Commerce here.
“Support free speech and hold big tech accountable. Immediately conduct a thorough review of federal policy regarding free speech online and provide policy solutions to address big tech’s censorship of speech.”
Despite conservatives believing that Facebook censored information about COVID-19 (which was actually dangerous disinformation), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that while they were “pressured” by the Biden administration to remove disinformation, he never suggests that they actually did so. Anecdotally, I can attest that as a Facebook user, disinformation about COVID was rampant.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit that would have restricted the government communicating with internet giants over what it saw a “misinformation”, because the majority opinion (written by Amy Coney Barrett) found that the two Republican-led states and social media users who filed the lawsuit against dozens of executive branch officials and agencies did not have legal right to do so, because they could not prove that government pressure had suppressed their free-speech rights.
Furthermore, if corporations are effectively people with regard to rights, social media companies are privately owned and allowed to platform (or not platform) whatever they want. In fact, most have a long history of not platforming hate speech. Not all speech qualifies as “free”, and it can be argued that harmful disinformation that could get people killed is NOT protected.
“For example, former president Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter and the United States, alleging that the government coerced Twitter into suppressing speech in violation of the First Amendment; the complaint was dismissed on the grounds that Twitter was a private actor.” [Source]
This is particularly hypocritical, since Twitter kept an entire DATABASE of requests to censor content that came from Republicans.
“When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.”
So what are we holding Big Tech accountable FOR, in this case? Gilman doesn’t say.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.1: Department of Commerce here.
““The FCC,” writes Carr, “has an important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market.” Nowhere is that clearer “than when it comes to Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.””
As I point out in Section 4.1 when Gilman proposes “holding Big Tech accountable”, the question is, accountable for what? I wrote, in part:
In June 2024, the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit that would have restricted the government communicating with internet giants over what it saw a “misinformation”, because the majority opinion (written by Amy Coney Barrett) found that the two Republican-led states and social media users who filed the lawsuit against dozens of executive branch officials and agencies did not have legal right to do so, because they could not prove that government pressure had suppressed their free-speech rights.
Furthermore, if corporations are effectively people with regard to rights, social media companies are privately owned and allowed to platform (or not platform) whatever they want. In fact, most have a long history of not platforming hate speech. Not all speech qualifies as “free”, and it can be argued that harmful disinformation that could get people killed is NOT protected.
“For example, former president Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Twitter and the United States, alleging that the government coerced Twitter into suppressing speech in violation of the First Amendment; the complaint was dismissed on the grounds that Twitter was a private actor.” [Source]
Full contextual analysis of Section 5: Independent Regulatory Agencies here.
“In addition to taking unilateral action, Carr says, the FCC should work with Congress on legislative changes to ensure that “Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections.”
This would amount to government control of social media. As I note above, private companies are not required to platform anything they don’t want to.
Section 230 protects online platforms from being held legally liable for content that users post on their sites. This means that companies like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube aren’t treated as the publishers of user-generated content, and thus aren’t responsible for defamatory, illegal, or harmful posts made by third parties.
Here’s where the author contradicts themselves:
Section 230 also allows these platforms to moderate or remove content they find objectionable, offensive, or harmful, without being held liable for doing so. The law encourages “good faith” moderation efforts, allowing companies to remove harmful content while remaining shielded from lawsuits that might otherwise arise from such decisions.
Is the author proposing that the government be the arbiter of what is “objectionable, offensive, or harmful”?
Full contextual analysis of Section 5: Independent Regulatory Agencies here.
“The FCC needs to change course and bring new urgency to achieving four main goals: 1) Reining in Big Tech, 2) Promoting national security, 3) Unleashing economic prosperity, and 4) Ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”
The first three of these four are not (or have not traditionally been) the FCC’s responsibility. I touched on this in Section 4.1, during the previous discussion about “reining in Big Tech.”
What’s particularly interesting here is that Republicans supported killing net neutrality, which the FCC enforced, saying it “gave too much power and discretion to the FCC. Perhaps they’re coming around to the idea that killing net neutrality was a terrible idea. (Spoiler: Yes. That is what is happening.) More in the analysis below.
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.
“[the FCC should] Eliminate immunities that courts added to Section 230.”
Section 230 refers to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides legal immunity to internet platforms (such as social media companies and websites) from being held liable for content created by its users. In effect, they’re not treated as publishers of user-generated content, meaning they can’t be held legally responsible for what people post.
Section 230 also holds that platforms are allowed to moderate content as they see fit, without losing their immunity from liability.
So, repealing these immunities would be a RIDICULOUS mess for social media companies, to the point that they’d probably shut down. Can you imagine if someone with pockets as deep as Facebook’s could get sued for harmful, false, or defamatory content posted by Facebook users? They’d have ten million lawsuits against them on day one.
Conversely, this might result in extremely strict content moderation, to avoid lawsuits, which would most certainly reduce free speech online, which is something Carr says he wants the FCC to champion, so this idea is somewhat nonsensical. Carr also argues that these bigger tech companies have unfair monopolies over smaller companies, then turns around and argues for a policy which would prevent smaller tech companies from existing – they can’t afford the legal compliance.
This position is SO far opposed to what Carr claims to want, that one wonders if he’s claiming he wants free speech, but really doesn’t (and knows that what he’s calling for will result in killing it.)
Full contextual analysis of Section 5.2: Federal Communications Commission here.